~* Citrus *~ Parsing Expressions for Ruby Citrus is a compact and powerful parsing library for Ruby that combines the elegance and expressiveness of the language with the simplicity and power of parsing expressions. = Installation Via RubyGems: $ sudo gem install citrus From a local copy: $ git clone git://github.com/mjijackson/citrus.git $ cd citrus $ rake package && sudo rake install = Background In order to be able to use Citrus effectively, you must first understand the difference between syntax and semantics. Syntax is a set of rules that govern the way letters and punctuation may be used in a language. For example, English syntax dictates that proper nouns should start with a capital letter and that sentences should end with a period. Semantics are the rules by which meaning may be derived in a language. For example, as you read a book you are able to make some sense of the particular way in which words on a page are combined to form thoughts and express ideas because you understand what the words themselves mean and you can understand what they mean collectively. Computers use a similar process when interpreting code. First, the code must be parsed into recognizable symbols or tokens. These tokens may then be passed to an interpreter which is responsible for forming actual instructions from them. Citrus is a pure Ruby library that allows you to perform both lexical analysis and semantic interpretation quickly and easily. Using Citrus you can write powerful parsers that are simple to understand and easy to create and maintain. In Citrus, there are three main types of objects: rules, grammars, and matches. == Rules A rule is an object that specifies some matching behavior on a string. There are two types of rules: terminals and non-terminals. Terminals can be either Ruby strings or regular expressions that specify some input to match. For example, a terminal created from the string "end" would match any sequence of the characters "e", "n", and "d", in that order. A terminal created from a regular expression uses Ruby's regular expression engine to attempt to create a match. Non-terminals are rules that may contain other rules but do not themselves match directly on the input. For example, a Repeat is a non-terminal that may contain one other rule that will try and match a certain number of times. Several other types of non-terminals are available that will be discussed later. Rule objects may also have semantic information associated with them in the form of Ruby modules. These modules contain methods that will be used to extend any match objects created by the rule with which they are associated. == Grammars A grammar is a container for rules. Usually the rules in a grammar collectively form a complete specification for some language, or a well-defined subset thereof. A Citrus grammar is really just a souped-up Ruby module. These modules may be included in other grammar modules in the same way that Ruby modules are normally used. This property allows you to divide a complex grammar into reusable pieces that may be combined dynamically at runtime. Any grammar rule with the same name as a rule in an included grammar may access that rule with a mechanism similar to Ruby's super keyword. == Matches Matches are created by rule objects when they match on the input. A match contains the string of text that made up the match as well as its offset in the original input string. During a parse, matches are arranged in a tree structure where any match may contain any number of other matches. This structure is determined by the way in which the rule that generated each match is used in the grammar. For example, a match that is created from a non-terminal rule that contains several other terminals will likewise contain several matches, one for each terminal. Match objects may be extended with semantic information in the form of methods. These methods can interpret the text of a match using the wealth of information available to them including the text of the match, its position in the input, and any submatches. = Syntax The most straightforward way to compose a Citrus grammar is to use Citrus' own custom grammar syntax. This syntax borrows heavily from Ruby, so it should already be familiar to Ruby programmers. == Terminals Terminals may be represented by a string or a regular expression. Both follow the same rules as Ruby string and regular expression literals. 'abc' "abc\n" /\xFF/ Character classes and the dot (match anything) symbol are supported as well for compatibility with other parsing expression implementations. [a-z0-9] # match any lowercase letter or digit [\x00-\xFF] # match any octet . # match anything, even new lines == Repetition Quantifiers may be used after any expression to specify a number of times it must match. The universal form of a quantifier is N*M where N is the minimum and M is the maximum number of times the expression may match. 'abc'1*2 # match "abc" a minimum of one, maximum # of two times 'abc'1* # match "abc" at least once 'abc'*2 # match "abc" a maximum of twice The + and ? operators are supported as well for the common cases of 1* and *1 respectively. 'abc'+ # match "abc" at least once 'abc'? # match "abc" a maximum of once == Lookahead Both positive and negative lookahead are supported in Citrus. Use the & and ! operators to indicate that an expression either should or should not match. In neither case is any input consumed. &'a' 'b' # match a "b" preceded by an "a" !'a' 'b' # match a "b" that is not preceded by an "a" !'a' . # match any character except for "a" == Sequences Sequences of expressions may be separated by a space to indicate that the rules should match in that order. 'a' 'b' 'c' # match "a", then "b", then "c" 'a' [0-9] # match "a", then a numeric digit == Choices Ordered choice is indicated by a vertical bar that separates two expressions. Note that any operator binds more tightly than the bar. 'a' | 'b' # match "a" or "b" 'a' 'b' | 'c' # match "a" then "b" (in sequence), or "c" == Super When including a grammar inside another, all rules in the child that have the same name as a rule in the parent also have access to the "super" keyword to invoke the parent rule. == Labels Match objects may be referred to by a different name than the rule that originally generated them. Labels are created by placing the label and a colon immediately preceding any expression. chars:/[a-z]+/ # the characters matched by the regular # expression may be referred to as "chars" # in a block method == Precedence The following table contains a list of all operators and their precedence. A higher level of precedence indicates tighter binding. Operator | Level of Precedence | Name ---------------------------------------------------------------- '' | 6 | Literal string "" | 6 | Literal string [] | 6 | Character class . | 6 | Any character (dot) // | 6 | Regular expression () | 6 | Grouping * | 5 | Repetition (arbitrary) + | 5 | Repetition (one or more) ? | 5 | Repetition (zero or one) & | 4 | And predicate ! | 4 | Not predicate : | 4 | Label <>, {} | 3 | Extension e1 e2 | 2 | Sequence e1 | e2 | 1 | Ordered choice = Example Below is an example of a simple grammar that is able to parse strings of integers separated by any amount of white space and a + symbol. grammar Addition rule additive number plus (additive | number) end rule number [0-9]+ space end rule plus '+' space end rule space [ \t]* end end Several things to note about the above example: * Grammar and rule declarations end with the "end" keyword * A Sequence of rules is created by separating expressions with a space * Likewise, ordered choice is represented with a vertical bar * Parentheses may be used to override the natural binding order * Rules may refer to other rules in their own definitions simply by using the other rule's name * Any expression may be followed by a quantifier == Interpretation The grammar above is able to parse simple mathematical expressions such as "1+2" and "1 + 2+3", but it does not have enough semantic information to be able to actually interpret these expressions. At this point, when the grammar parses a string it generates a tree of Match objects. Each match is created by a rule. A match will know what text it contains, its offset in the original input, and what submatches it contains. Submatches are created whenever a rule contains another rule. For example, in the grammar above the number rule matches a string of digits followed by white space. Thus, a match generated by the number rule will contain two submatches. We can use Ruby's block syntax to create a module that will be attached to these matches when they are created and is used to lazily extend them when we want to interpret them. The following example shows one way to do this. grammar Addition rule additive (number plus term:(additive | number)) { def value number.value + term.value end } end rule number ([0-9]+ space) { def value text.strip.to_i end } end rule plus '+' space end rule space [ \t]* end end In this version of the grammar we have added two semantic blocks, one each for the additive and number rules. These blocks contain methods that will be present on all match objects that result from matches of those particular rules. It's easiest to explain what is going on here by starting with the lowest level block, which is defined within the number rule. The semantic block associated with the number rule defines one method, value. Inside this method, we can see that the value of a number match is determined to be its text value, stripped of white space and converted to an integer. The additive rule also extends its matches with a value method. Notice the use of the "term" label within the rule definition. This label allows the match that is created by either the additive or the number rule to be retrieved using the "term" label. The value of an additive is determined to be the values of its number and term matches added together using Ruby's addition operator. Since additive is the first rule defined in the grammar, any match that results from parsing a string with this grammar will have a value method that can be used to recursively calculate the collective value of the entire match tree. To give it a try, save the code for the Addition grammar in a file called addition.citrus. Next, assuming you have the Citrus gem installed, try the following sequence of commands in a terminal. $ irb > require 'citrus' => true > Citrus.load 'addition' => [Addition] > m = Addition.parse '1 + 2 + 3' => # m.value => 6 Congratulations! You just ran your first piece of Citrus code. Take a look at examples/calc.citrus for an example of a calculator that is able to parse and evaluate more complex mathematical expressions. = Links http://mjijackson.com/citrus http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~baford/packrat/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsing_expression_grammar http://treetop.rubyforge.org/index.html = License Copyright 2010 Michael Jackson Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.